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PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. 

1890. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, 




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PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. 

1890. 



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Copyright, 1890, by J. B. Lippincott Company. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 



Lowell, James Russell, poet, essayist, and diplo- 
matist, was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Feb- 
ruary 22, 1 8 19, He came of a family distinguished 
in many ways. His father, a friend gf Channing's, 
was minister of the West Church in Boston. The 
future poet entered Harvard College in his sixteenth 
year and graduated in 1838, but without any special 
rank. His abilities, however, were early recognised ; 
all his. youthful contemporaries were sure of his 
coming fame. His father had an unusually large 
library, not restricted to theological subjects, and the 
son was left to browse in it. The variety and extent 
of his reading was the foundation of his future scholar- 
ship, and the source of those stores of allusion and 
anecdote for which his writings and conversation 
are equally remarkable. The severe studies which 
made him a scholar came long after his university 
course. 

In his twenty-second year he published A Year's 
Life and other Poems. He studied law, but never 
seriously sought to practise. In company with Robert 
Carter, in 1843, he edited The Pioneer, a monthly 



. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

magazine, with Hawthorne, Poe, and Whittier for 
contributors ; but after three issues the publishers 
failed. In 1844 he published a second volume of 
poems, in which were seen growing power and greatei^\ 
promise. In the same year he married Maria White, ' 
a beautiful and intellectual woman, herself the author 
of some charming poems. In 1845 ^^ published 
Conversations on the Old Poets, an original and sug- 
gestive book, but immature in style and treatment. 
In 1846, at the outbreak of the Mexican war, he pub- 
lished a satiric poem in the Yankee dialect, purport- 
ing to have been written by a rustic named Hosea 
Biglow, and edited by the Rev. Homer Wilbur, an 
amusing pedant, in which the policy of the pro- 
slavery party and the conduct of the United States 
government toward an unoffending neighbour were 
held up to scorn and ridicule. It was apparently a 
trifle, but it had immediate and universal success; 
and from this slight beginning came the Biglozv Papers^ 
perhaps the highest expression of the poet's genius, 
and beyond doubt the first of modern satires in 
English. It is the soul of New England character ; 
racy with its droll humour, and sparkling with its 
unborrowed wit ; but its rare qualities are fully ap- 
preciated only by those to whom the rustic life and 
the dialect are familiar. 

The year 1848 was productive and memorable. It 
was the year of European revolutions and of bound- 
less hopes among enthusiasts for the future of mankind. 
A great many serious poems were written at this time, 
and formed a third volume. He wrote The Vision of 
Sir Lmmfal, one of the best, as it is one of the most 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 5 

popular, of his poems ; also A Fable for Critics^ given 
to the world anonymously — a series of witty and 
dashing sketches of American authors. It is full of 
puns and grotesque rhymes, done in a ' happy-go- 
lucky' style, but is not ill-natured, and has a basis of 
good sense. After all these years it is seen that his 
judgments of men and tendencies were almost pro- 
phetic. 

In 185 I he visited Europe with his wife, then in 
delicate health, and returned in 1852. Her death 
occurred early in 1853. In 1857 he was married in 
Portland, Maine, to Miss Frances Dunlap, who died 
in London in February 1885. 

In 1855 he was appointed professor of Modern 
Languages and Literature in Harvard College, to 
succeed Longfellow, and thereupon went to Europe 
to prosecute his studies. While still holding this 
chair, and delivering lectures which were memorable, 
he edited the Atlantic Mo7tt/ify,heg\nmng in 1857, 
and afterwards, along with Charles E. Norton, the 
North American Reviezv^ from 1863 to 1867. Com- 
memoration Ode, a notable poem, was written in 1865 
in honour of the alumni who had fallen in the war of 
the rebellion. The Cathedral (1870), a poem marked 
by profound thought, but lightened by some playful 
passages, was suggested by a visit to Chartres. 
Three patriotic odes were written (1875-76), one for 
the anniversary of the battle at Concord, one for the 
Washington Elm in Cambridge, the other for the 
centennial of the Fourth of July. 

His prose writings — My Study Windows and 
Among my Books — have high qualities, and are likely 



5 JAMES R USSELL L O WELL. 

to be enduring. Some of the essays, such as those 
upon Chaucer, Dante, Shakespeare, and Dryden, are 
masterpieces of literary art. The sentences are ani- 
mated, not so much with crackling epigrams as with 
airiness : they are (perhaps too frequently) studded 
with recondite allusions, and are often lustrous with 
poetic images. It is always evident that it is a poet 
who writes. To the author's friends the most de- 
lightful of his prose works is Fireside Travels, con- 
taining his recollections of Cambridge Thirty Years 
Ago. 

The second series of Bigloiv Papers appeared dur- 
ing the civil war, in which the poet's three nephews 
and other near relatives gave their lives for the Union. 
This volume is naturally graver and upon a higher 
plane of thought and sentiment. Certain passages 
(probably the best he has written) show an intensity 
of feeling rare in human experience ; in others the 
scenery and the seasons are painted with loving 
touches ; and the rude dialect, so far from being a 
blemish, lends an indefinable charm to the tenderness 
and to the descriptive art. 

Lowell was an ardent abolitionist, and from the first 
gave himself unreservedly to the cause of freedom. 
In this, as in all things, he showed himself an heir 
of Puritan blood, faithful to the right, without regard 
to popularity. In such poems as The Present Crisis 
he came to his countrymen with a 'burden' like a 
Hebrew prophet. 

He was appointed in 1877 minister of the United 
States to the court of Madrid, and was transferred in 
1880 to that of St. James, where he remained until 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, y 

1885. One of his volumes, Democracy (1886), con- 
tains some of the brilliant addresses he made while 
in England, and one volume, Heartsease and Rue 
(1888), embraces later poems, including a few written 
long before for the Atlantic Monthly. 

The post of minister to Great Britain is the highest 
in the gift of an American president, and that Lowell 
should have been sent to represent his country in the 
old home of the race sufficiently shows the estimation 
in which he was held. Yet he never had been a 
politician, had never rendered any party services, and 
never held the smallest office. His name is upon the 
roll of the university as professor emeritus, and he 
has long ceased to discharge the duties. He lives at 
Elmwood (in Cambridge), the house in which he was 
born; and here in 1890 he wrote a Life of Haw- 
thorne. His Collected Writings, Literary Essays, 
Poems, &c., were published by Macmillan in 10 vol- 
umes (1890-91). 



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